5th October 2007You really must get the mind calm, get into that calm state where the mind completely shuts down. If you are always in a room where an engine is running, you get used to the noise and stop hearing it after a while. It’s when the engine is turned off that you know the difference. When the mind engine is completely shut down, what is left is a preview of Nibbãna. When the mind completely stops working, it’s an amazing state and one that you won’t forget for your whole life. It’s called appanã samãdhi, the deep state of samãdhi, and it gives the utmost rest. But if you don’t put all your effort and determination into keeping your attention on the one point – either the breath at the nose or the mental repetition of the word buddho – you will not attain it, I promise you. If you keep your attention on the one point and are not willing to let the mind wander from the “hook” of the meditation object, you will enter the deep state of samãdhi.

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Reaching appanã samãdhi is worthwhile because it gives us a preview of Nibbãna; Than Ajahn Mahã Bua called “it the Nibbãna of the little man”, as it can be reached by anyone who puts in enough determination and effort. It’s not beyond our abil-ities, so please don’t think it is. The kilesas tell us what we should or shouldn’t do but, in fact, we can do whatever we want. The cittahas abilities that are unlimited, but we ourselves limit its abilities. Please understand this. We cling to the things that we think we know, not letting go, not letting go of the body, feelings, thoughts, memories or consciousness that make up the five khandhas. We cling to this view or that opinion, and we cling to a past that has gone and a future that has not yet arisen. Isn’t this strange? We think that we know these things so we cling to them and are afraid of the unknown. This is why the kilesas will not let us get into appanã samãdhi; they are afraid of the unknown but, in fact, the unknown is our true home.Avijjã can be translated as “not knowing”; it’s the master of wan-ting to know, yet it is completely afraid of the unknown. It wants to know, but is not able to know in line with the truth. It wants to understand everything and to stay with everything it knows or thinks it knows. But avijjã cannot stay with the unknown, and it is terribly afraid of the unknown because that is where it vanishes. Avijjã vanishes when we have sati (awareness) or if the mind is one-pointed on a meditation object. The kilesas have no power over us there. Please understand this clearly; if we are completely absorbed into one object, whether the object of investigation or the object of calm meditation, the kilesas have no power over us. But the moment we realise that something is pulling our citta away from the object, we see the power of the kilesas. So, the task is very simple – just stay with one object and put all your deter-mination into doing so. Think about it; why do you want to go over the past yet again? We’ve thought about the past so many times before, but what benefit has it brought us? It’s not lasting, it’s anicca. Everything is anicca, arising and ceasing – feelings, thoughts, memories, all of them are anicca. Most of the time we cannot even control what arises and ceases. Thoughts just pop up out of the blue and disappear of their own accord, as do feelings and even consciousness (viññãõa) itself. Things pop up and disappear all the time, but we cling to them because of the power of avijjã which wants to know and wants to understand but will never be able to do so. The only thing that can really know or understand is the citta, but we have to get rid of avijjã before we can access that state of knowingness. We have to pull away the curtain of avijjã, the thick curtain that is before our eyes all the time. Please understand this clearly. There is something going on behind the curtain, but we see only shadows, as if we are looking at the dance of shadow puppets. From the shadows, we assume what is going on, but once we pull aside the curtain of avijjã, we can clearly see what is really happening. We don’t have to assume any more; we simply see in line with the truth, and what we see is completely different from what we could infer through the thick curtain of avijjã, the curtain of not-knowingness. Please realisethat everything that comes into your senses, every thought, every view and every opinion is wrong. As close as they might be to the truth, they are still wrong. So let them go and just stay with the one object, seeing it and understanding it with your true citta.However, your experience tells you that meditation practice is very difficult, because things pop into the mind saying, “This is important; this must be done; I am right; I am wrong”, and so on. This is where all the problems start, but you must not give in to them. If you don’t give in to the memories, if you don’t give in to the thoughts, if you don’t give in to your views and opinions they must disappear, and what is left is an extremely peaceful state of mind because the thoughts, feeling and memories have ceased to bother you constantly. The same applies to the body; the older we get the more the body bothers us, but we shouldn’t give in to concerns about the body either. Once we get close to entering appanã samãdhi, the citta will mostly stay inside. It will wriggle around inside, still trying to get out, but if we can overcome this hindrance, we can actually enter appanã samadhi. It’s like going through a tunnel and ending up in an utterly peaceful state that we will never forget. Once you come out of that state, you say, “Aaahhhhh.” Than Ajahn Mahã Bua called it a wonder, a wonder that we can all experience when we do the meditation practice. It’s the first wonder of meditation. There are quite a few wonders – another occurs during the investigation of pain – but attaining appanã samãdhi is one of the wonders we can experience most easily, and everyone can do it. Don’t let the kilesas fool you into thinking that you can’t, that you can’t enter appanã samãdhi because you are a Westerner or for some other reason. That’s wrong view. Of course, you can enter appanã samãdhi – I could do it and so can you. It’s not so difficult, nor is it as difficult as we think. Not only does it give rise to an enormously peaceful state of mind but it also results in a lot of energy which we can use for investigation. In addition, it gives us a preview of Nibbãna, thereby fostering our faith and proving that there is something beyond all the things we see, hear, touch,taste or smell. It is an experience more amazing than any other in the whole world. The conviction we obtain from the experience of the deep state of samãdhi helps us go through all the difficulties on the spiritual path, whether during investigation or when removing the kilesas. The faith or conviction we obtain, even if the expe-rience only happens once, can be the engine that pulls us through all the problems that arise in meditation practice. We remember the experience of being absolutely calm as the mind engine was completely shut down without any noise at all, and we never forget it. But to reach this state, we have to resist the power of the kilesas, the soldiers of avijjã, which bring up thoughts of lust or anger, or memories of various things, or thoughts about the future. We have to resist such thoughts, not give in to thinking; when they arise, we have to let them pass by, say goodbye and go back to the object, say goodbye and go back to the object of meditation, again and again. Don’t allow these thoughts to obsess your heart, and don’t dwell on them or wonder why a particular thought came up – you can think about that for the rest of your life and never find an answer. Thoughts and memories just arise and cease; simply be aware that anicca is their nature.Memory, feelings and the body are also not-self; as the Lord Buddha pointed out in the teaching of anattã, “These things are not me, they do not belong to me, they are not myself.” And because we cling or attach to them and think they are me or mine, dukkha arises. It also arises when we try to get rid of things, clin-ging to them in a negative way, not wanting them to be me or mine. For instance, if anger arises, we don’t want it to be me or mine but we still cling to it; this is wrong understanding, so just let it pass by. Recognising that lust or anger are not me or mine, we let them pass by, neither going for them nor going against them. Understand this clearly; if you foster a thought of hate or some kind of not-wanting, it will become a big problem. Just as an avalanche is built up from the first stone or the first snowball, so the first thought of hate or dislike can, if fostered, become an avalanche of emotion that destroys us. We need to be aware of the processthat leads to the avalanche, and that avalanches can be stopped at the very beginning, if we are to prevent the development of tides of emotion that we cannot deal with. The way to stop the avalanche at the beginning is to recognise that the initial thought is not me, doesn’t belong to me and is not myself, and that having arisen it must cease. Don’t buy into it, and don’t attach to it either by liking or disliking. This is what makes us free of dukkha. Please understand this clearly and understand it in your heart. I know this practice is difficult, but one has to bring up some determination and effort to throw out all the thoughts.Imagine that you are a security guard in an art gallery, and that your task is simply to watch who comes in and goes out the door. You don’t follow the people going in or going out. Similarly, in meditation practice you don’t follow the things that arise in the citta nor do you latch onto them. Your task is just to recognise that a thought has arisen and a thought has passed by, vedanã (feeling) has arisen and vedanã has passed by, and so on. This is the job of the security guard; he is not paid to follow particular people, because he would miss all the other people coming into the gal-lery. His job is just to stay at the door and take note of whoever is coming in or going out. So, in the practice, just be with whatever arises and ceases, just know and stay with the meditation object, such as the word buddho. If it becomes boring, you can play a little trick – get interested in it. Think of something you have been pre-viously been interested in and put this interest into the meditation object. It doesn’t matter what the previous interest was. People who are fond of mountain climbing or motor racing get completely absorbed because of the danger that lurks in the background, but when we are on our meditation cushions or doing walking medi-tation there is no danger, so we get complacent and become less attentive to our task. So, become attentive. Feel that you want to understand the meditation object, such as the word buddho; don’t just formally repeat it but really try to understand its quality, how it changes from moment to moment. Similarly with the breath; we need to understand its quality, how it changes from momentto moment. We’re not interested in whether we have practiced for five minutes or ten minutes, we’re just interested in this one moment, this one buddho or this one breath. We need to be there in the present, with our full attention on the one object. Then, the knowingness of the citta will know about the quality of the buddhoor the breath, and we won’t have to think about the quality of the object. We just have to be attentive, and the knowing will arise. Please understand this. Get there. Don’t buy into thoughts.Once you have been in the monastery for a while, don’t bother about what other people are doing. Let them do their thing and you do your thing; don’t get disturbed by other people but rather live as if you were living alone. You can’t blame the trees or the animals for your own dissatisfaction, you can only blame yourself. Everything you need to deal with is already inside you. If that wasn’t the case, we would be lost, and the Lord Buddha would never have been able to point the way out of dukkha. So let’s take control of ourselves, not in the sense of controlling the breath or the word buddho but in taking control to stop the kilesas coming in to disturb our hearts. A person who owns an apartment has con-trol over who comes in; he can close the door or open the door, and this is the kind of control I mean. Once they are in, however, we can’t control how they behave. In the world we can’t control other people or situations, and we cannot control our environ-ment; the environment is just what it is, and other people are just what they are. But we can take charge of what happens within us.You need to understand this. While living in this monastery, your thoughts should not be concerned with what other people are doing or how they are behaving. When Than Ajahn Mahã Bua received complaints from a bhikkhu about another bhikkhu misbe-having, he would either kick out the bhikkhu who had complained (if the other bhikkhu’s misbehaviour was not serious) or kick them both out (if the other bhikkhu really had misbehaved badly). This was because he didn’t want us to complain about other people or situations but rather to deal with situations that arise within our own heart, not to find scapegoats for them. We have blamedothers for our negative feelings all our lives, but now it has to stop. We shouldn’t look for scapegoats for our unpleasant feelings, and nor should we find targets for our pleasant feelings. If we do, we will not be able to stay with the feeling itself to see its arising and ceasing, because when a good or pleasant feeling arises, we imme-diately wonder how we got it, how can we prolong it and how can we get it again in the future. Similarly, when an unpleasant feeling arises we immediately look for a scapegoat, such as someone who looked at us in a strange way, or the bad weather or the quality of the food. With both unpleasant and pleasant feelings, we usu-ally look around for reasons why they have arisen, but we should instead just accept that they arise and cease. This is the first step. Before we start our investigation, we have to accept, accept both the good things within us and the bad. This doesn’t mean that we go on doing the bad and neglect doing the good, but simply that we should accept that both good and bad are within the range of the heart. We have to take stock of what is in our hearts, otherwise how do we know what is there and what to get rid of? It’s like a merchant who has goods that are stinking and rotten but is unable to identify the rotten ones because he hasn’t made an inventory of his stock. Instead, he blames his neighbour for the rotten smell that comes from his own merchandise. We need to take stock of what is in our hearts; accept the good things, go on doing them and do more of them, and accept the bad things and resolve not to do them again. This is how we can slowly change our ways of behaviour to become more and more content and happy. If we start doing it now, we can experience a more satisfying life within a few years and, of course, have a better rebirth in the future.However, doing these things alone will not eradicate the under-lying causes for our greed, hate and delusion – they will just reduce it a little. If we want to get rid of our unwholesome tendencies, we have to tread the eightfold path that consists of three columns: sïla, samãdhi and paññã. For laypeople, keeping sïla means keeping the five precepts, and for the monks it means keeping the two hundred and twenty-seven monastic rules. Samãdhi is the abilityto concentrate on one object and stay with it without the citta run-ning around like a monkey jumping from tree to tree reaching for this or that banana. Samãdhi also provides rest. People who work a lot need to rest in the evening and put their bodies to sleep, and similarly we have to be able to put our minds to sleep. You rest your body every day, but when have you ever rested your citta? When was the last time you went into deep samãdhi or at least upacãra samãdhi, where the citta is rested and untroubled by external things? We need the ability to concentrate to get such rest. Paññã is investigation, and it is only through investigation that we can cut the roots of the tree of life, the tree of rebirth. This kind of investigation does not try to reach conclusions. Rather, it leads to insight, which takes place in the heart, in the knowingness of the citta which is its true state, not in thoughts. Once we get a quiet moment, we go into that knowingness of the citta and start investi-gating. We investigate things over and over and over again. When we first come to the monastery, we start with the investigation of the body. We tear the body apart, from top to bottom, from out-side to inside. We break it into bits and pieces, detailed or coarse, to see and understand the nature of the body. As long as the heart has not understood the nature of the body, it will not let go. The heart is the only thing that can let go, not our minds.It is possible, by controlling our minds, to let go of unwhole-some things and develop wholesomeness. This kind of “letting go” can be compared to cutting the leaves of a tree. If it is a large tree with lots of leaves, we can’t see what is underneath the foliage, but when we cut off the leaves the trunk and branches become clearer. Control of mind is a way of pruning back and removing the leaves. However, trees grow back their leaves over and over again, so we have to keep cutting them back over and over again. I hope you can see that these efforts are ultimately useless, as the capacity of the tree to regrow is left untouched. Similarly, the underlying causes of the unwholesomeness in our hearts are untouched by simply controlling the mind, by “letting go” alone. The practice of not following our desires is equivalent to cutting the leaves. Theleaves have to be cut, but that is all we will achieve unless we prac-tice investigation. Once there are no more leaves, investigation allows us to see the branches which give rise to new leaves. The heart can then cut the branches off one by one until the whole tree of rebirth is uprooted.We can think about “letting go”, letting go of our greed and hate for the rest of our lives, but it will not change anything; greed and hate will still reside within our hearts. Only if we understand the nature of the pot of earth that supports the plant of greed and hate, can we destroy it. When the plant pot is completely destroyed, greed and hate cannot grow any more. And this plant pot is none other than the body. The body has to be completely understood, stripped down to its bits and pieces and into the four elements, over and over again. Once we really see it clearly with our inner eyes, with our citta, understanding will arise. Then, the citta will know the danger of the body and will let go of its own accord. We do not have to tell it to let go; once the citta understands the true nature of the body or feeling, it will let go of it immediately, just like a little child touching fire and immediately retracting its hand.Day in and day out, moment by moment, are we touching the fire, and that’s why we have so much dukkha. So, at first, we have to develop concentration. Investigation is not very worthwhile if the mind cannot concentrate on one object. You need to be able to stay with one object for at least ten or fifteen minutes, other-wise your investigation will just revolve around in saññã (memory and association) and sankhãra (thoughts). If saññã and sankhãra helped us reach the end of dukkha, we wouldn’t need to come to this monastery and go through all the hardships of practice. The solution is not to be found in our memories and thoughts. It is to make our hearts empty and see things as they are. We cannot force the heart to let go, the heart lets go of its own accord!

Bua observes the essential enduring truth of the sentient being as constituted of the indestructible reality of the citta (heart/mind), which is characterized by the attribute of Awareness or Knowingness. This citta, which is intrinsically bright, clear, and Aware, gets superficially tangled up in samsara but ultimately cannot be destroyed by any samsaric phenomenon. Although Bua is often at pains to emphasise the need for meditation upon the non-Self (anatta), he also points out that the citta, while getting caught up in the vortex of conditioned phenomena, is not subject to destruction as are those things which are impermanent, suffering, and non-Self